


To Remember Roses

by sanguinity



Series: Tegmore [1]
Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Canon Divergence, Live Bush Universe, M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 08:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16115105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: Horatio doesn't remember their years together as well as he thinks he does. Happily, he has William to set him straight.Or: Umpteen Times Hornblower Was Thick Like a Brick and Didn't Mark Bush's Shows of Affection





	To Remember Roses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ColebaltBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColebaltBlue/gifts).



> It is perhaps poor form to argue with a long-dead author over one quote from one of his early novels, especially after he retconned it so lovingly for us later? And yet here I am, doing exactly that. Call it an excuse for post-coital cuddling, if you wish.
> 
> Much thanks to ColebaltBlue for the prompt and her encouragement, to grrlpup for her support, and to rachelindeed for assistance with the title.

> _Bush's hand which lay outside the blanket twitched and stirred and moved towards him; he took it and he felt a gentle pressure. For a few brief seconds Bush's hand stroked his feebly, caressing it as though it was a woman's. There was a glimmer of a smile on Bush's drawn face with its closed eyes. During all the years they had served together it was the first sign of affection either had shown for the other._
> 
> _— Flying Colours_

 

William's thumb, which had been stroking the length of Horatio's fingers, stopped moving. His hand lay still, loosely clasped in Horatio's, against Horatio's bare stomach. "The _first_ time?" William asked. 

Horatio made an irritable noise and turned in on himself, away from where William was pressed up against his back.

William pushed up on his elbow so he could see over Horatio's shoulder. "In _France?_ On the road to Paris?" 

William had finally consented to stay on at Tegmore, even agreeing to give up his house in Plymouth, and Horatio's pleasure in the occasion had foolishly moved him to sentimentality. Never again, if this was the fuss William would make over it. Horatio turned his face further into the pillow. 

"France was the _first_ time I showed you any affection?" William insisted.

"Either of us. It wasn't a criticism, William. You were always as perfect a first officer as a man could want."

"But…" William freed his hand from Horatio's — Horatio tried to catch it before it went, but was too slow — and ran a quick soothing stroke down Horatio's arm. 

Horatio preferred the hand-holding: William caressed Horatio's fingers with focused intent, tracing their lengths one by one, smoothing the knuckles, circling the mounts above his palm. Just now, it had reminded Horatio of the first time William had held and caressed his hand, during that long, hellish journey toward Paris. Seven hundred kilometres of despair, and the only comforts to be found were in the slow improvement in William's strength — but to what end? so that he could hold himself upright for his own execution? — and William's hand in his. Kilometre after kilometre, as the signposts counted down to their deaths, William had clenched Horatio's hand when the pain became unbearable, or caressed Horatio's fingers when he wanted distraction from his misery. Sometimes William slept, and Horatio would extract his hand to smooth William's hair away from his face, while Brown looked intently out the window. Horatio always returned his hand to William's after, so that William would not have to wake alone and in pain, but also so that he would never be faced with the decision of having to reach for Horatio's hand, and worse — and Horatio hated himself for tacking _worse_ onto the thought, but in his own misery, he had craved Bush's touch — _worse,_ that faced with the decision, William might decline to reach for Horatio's hand again. 

However, it seemed that remembering aloud the hand-holding _then_ had thieved him of hand-holding _now,_ and Horatio was bitterly resentful. 

The bright morning light spilled against the open bed curtains, a touch of sky visible through the window. The small cove below this side of the house was invisible from the bed, but surely the sea breeze would be freshening. It would have been better to take William sailing this morning. He could have watched William's hands on the halliards and sheets, and restrained himself from embarrassing declarations.

"But surely…" William said, continuing doggedly on, and Horatio made another irritated noise. "Surely, in _Kingston…"_

William had taken him whoring in Kingston, and it was in that long haze of lust and spirits that Horatio had first discovered his weakness for William's hands. Not just while they were with the whores, either — although it was always better for Horatio with William touching him, showing him how a woman liked to be touched, or impatiently showing one of the women how to touch Horatio. But even after the brawl William had started with the _Clorinda's_ captain of marines, Horatio had not been content until he had taken William's hands in his own and seen to their care himself. The damage hadn't been significant: Bush's hands had always been a masterpiece of ruggedness, and that night he had sustained nothing worse than two split knuckles and some bruising. But Horatio had still cleaned and plastered them, daring in his besotted state to even caress and kiss them. That night, they had not bothered waiting for a whore before beginning.

"Or do you imagine that I go whoring with just anyone, or that when I do, I always sleep with them after?"

Horatio turned to blink up at William. "I had thought…" 

Horatio had been a virtual innocent then, with most of his naval experience spent on blockade in Brest or in prison in Spain; he had known little of women or whores, and had been unmoored by that first experience, trembling uncontrollably with raw feeling when they had finished. William had efficiently paid for the women and ushered them out, and then laid down beside Horatio, a heavy, protective arm thrown across him. Shuddering, Horatio had clutched at Bush's arm, curling into its weight, while Bush occasionally pet Horatio's chest, talking idly of everything and nothing. Bush's arm and voice had seemed like a great cable, holding Horatio fast against that tumult of feeling. Eventually Horatio's trembling calmed, but Bush continued talking, gradually making less and less sense until sleep overtook him. He snored reassuringly in Horatio's ear while Horatio stealthily stroked his arm, desperately pleased of his solid bulk beside him.

It was too humiliating for Horatio to say now what he had thought at the time; in truth, he had barely thought at all in the great sweeping wash of emotions. He cleared his throat, lest he say something that betrayed any of it.

"I took the wet spot for you, you know," William said, amusement in his voice. Horatio vaguely remembered that William had been fussy about the blanket, and had inexplicably chosen to lay directly on the scratchy thing instead of pushing it to the floor.

There was no wet spot this morning: when sober, William was as meticulous a fuck as he was an officer. But whenever there was one, William attempted to arrange them both so that Horatio would be spared it; it was a maneuver which Horatio had learned to be vigilant for. And it seemed William had done so as far back as Kingston, long before Horatio had become his commanding officer.

"And in Portsmouth…!" William said, indignant again. 

But he did not say _what_ in Portsmouth, or even when, and Horatio refused to ask, scrabbling instead through that lucky chance meeting during the Peace of Amiens and the subsequent visit. His simple pleasure at walking along bumping shoulders with William, both of them drunk on port and each other, and how jealous Horatio had been of William's greatcoat — not jealous that William had had one while Horatio had not, of course, but jealous that William's coat had hidden William's hands from him, William keeping them warm somewhere in the coat's depths, when Horatio wanted the job for himself. 

But arriving back at Mrs Mason's boarding house, Bush had discovered how cold Horatio's own hands had become during their walk back from the Long Rooms, and he had set himself about the business of chafing them warm again, until the blush of warmth had reached even Horatio's cheeks. It had been very nearly as satisfactory as the other way around.

"But even after I was your lieutenant, on the _Hotspur…!_ I know there's a certain formality between captain and lieutenant, and you never made the least suggestion that you were interested in seeing that distance breached. But… I stood up for you at your wedding."

And had performed magnificently, of course. Horatio's memories of the day were of Maria on his arm and Bush at his elbow, the latter a tower of strength and efficiency, always seeing to the next thing, on shore and on the ship. A quiet voice in his ear, a hand straightening his neckcloth, a steadying touch to his shoulder — not to mention the surprise honour guard and the horseless post-chaise. Bush had made the day far more than it would have been, had it been left in Horatio's or Mrs Mason's hands. 

"You made Mrs Hornblower very happy," Horatio said, repeating what he had said at the time. 

But William had learned some blunt poise in the intervening years — that, or he was driven by some inner conviction now, for he didn't shamefacedly brush the compliment away, as he had on the day. "You also, I trust."

"I… hr'm." Horatio's emotions about the day were too complicated to describe as _happy,_ but there had been moments of deep pride and pleasure, and Bush had been responsible for the bulk of them. 

But as much as Horatio had been warmed and steadied by William's actions that day, William had been too perfect a first officer for Horatio to imagine him deliberately doing less for another captain. Neither Sawyer nor Harvey would have asked such an office of him, them both being senior post captains and Bush only a junior lieutenant on their ships, but Meadows, who had taken command of the _Hotspur_ after Hornblower's promotion to post-captain… Had Meadows' command continued, Bush would have formed the same bond with him that he had with Horatio. 

He shook his head. "You would have done the same for another captain."

William ducked his chin mulishly. "It wouldn't have meant the same."

And yet Horatio knew otherwise, and had seen the evidence himself: on the _Hotspur,_ in the days between Horatio's promotion and Meadows' arrival, Bush had laboured single-mindedly to ready the ship for her new master, with hardly a thought for Horatio's impending departure.

"You were eager enough for Meadows," Horatio said, and immediately despised himself for betraying that long-banked ember of jealousy. 

" _Meadows,_ " William spat, and Horatio remembered too late that William would not easily forgive the man who had sunk his beloved _Hotspur._ "You thought I was eager for _Meadows…?_ I wouldn't have a new commander coming aboard and looking down on you, thinking you ran a slack ship. The new commander couldn't have been half the man of the old, I knew that before I ever laid eyes on him. And I was right, too." His expression became inexplicably soft, smiling down at Horatio with all the fondness that had accumulated over the intervening years. Horatio shifted uncomfortably, at a loss to explain such achingly deep affection from a man who had been given so little cause for it. "But it wasn't just your wedding. Your cabin furnishings," William continued, still determined to impress on Horatio the enormity of his error.

During the _Hotspur's_ blockade of Brest, the gunroom had taken pity on Horatio's poverty and presented him with hand-painted cabin furnishings, made from items purloined from the ship's stores. At the time, Horatio had been too bewildered with pleasure to discipline them for misuse of Admiralty property. 

"I did a bit of the painting for those," William said sheepishly, "before Gurney submitted there was one of the focsle men who would make less of a hash of it. It wasn't very good, although I daresay you never noticed it. You would have turned that pillow away, if you had."

But Horatio had noticed, and knew exactly which pillow William meant. He had puzzled over its history, even going so far as to retrieve it when Doughty had discreetly positioned it behind furnishings that were better-made. On that one pillow, a section of the faux-chintz roses had been painted in a clumsier hand than the rest, attempted by someone with more determination than skill. In his better moods, Horatio had liked to believe there had been sincere feeling behind those five roses.

It seemed there had been. William's, in fact. And Horatio had never recognised his hand.

"And also _…_ Well, no, I suppose you wouldn't have known about that," William said.

"Known about what?" Horatio asked, rolling over fully to face William properly now, stung at the idea of his first lieutenant having kept secrets from him, even as long ago as the _Hotspur_ had been. 

"Your first steward, what was his name?" 

"Grimes," Hornblower said, unhappy at the memory of poor Grimes. His own rank inexperience as a commander had directly led to the man's death.

William made a face, his emotions writ clear: _he_ did not pity Grimes. Horatio would even conjecture that William imagined some injury to Horatio on Grimes' part. " _Grimes._ If you had been any other captain, mind you, I would have left well enough alone — the business between a captain and a steward is no business of mine." 

"And yet you didn't leave well enough alone," Horatio said, taking his cue from William's discard.

"Well, it was _you,_ wasn't it? And the man didn't know how to make _coffee."_

Horatio frowned. "He learned, quickly enough. I barely had to instruct him after the first few days."

But William's smile was well-pleased with himself. "Of course you didn't. For two weeks, I had him making the gunroom's coffee." Then his smile wavered, as if doubting how the remainder of the story might sound. But under Horatio's stern gaze, he confessed the rest. "Because I couldn't be sure you would keep after him until he was making it properly, you see? So I had him do ours, too, so I could instruct him when he was deficient. You've never been terribly interested in your own comfort." The last was nearly apologetic; even now, William was unlikely to criticise Horatio's command, not even those early days when Horatio had been all bumbling and inexperience.

But if what William said was true, then it seemed that until Doughty's coming, every decent cup of coffee on the _Hotspur_ had been due to William. It was a small thing, perhaps, but there had been few enough comforts for a young, untried commander. Seeing to the steward's competence had not been part of William's duties, nor could he have done it for his captain's favour: he had kept it secret until now, after all, when the information would do his career no good at all. 

"It was like the pineapple juice," Horatio said, an uneasy revelation dawning. William blinked in surprise, then his face went blank. It was painful to look at, after the abashed, amused affection of the moment before. Horatio caught his hand.

"As you say," William agreed smoothly, his face showing only a distant, inexpressive indifference. "Beg your pardon, but I overstepped my bounds with Grimes."

It wasn't what Horatio had meant at all.

Just south of São Paulo, Hornblower had brought the _Lydia_ inshore on a deserted bit of coast for re-watering, in preparation for rounding the Horn. As chance had it, there had been an abandoned pineapple plantation there, the land not yet reclaimed for the more profitable sugar-cane. It was a largesse unknown to most of the watering party, and a net-full of ripe pineapples had made its way back to the _Lydia._ In a fit of exuberance, Bush had pressed the juice from one and sent it to his captain with his compliments.

At the time, Hornblower had been suffering from the death of his children and the insidious temptation of having a friend aboard — how often he had wanted to put aside the majesty of his rank and simply converse with Bush! — and the innocent gift had taken him badly. The scent of the juice reminded him painfully of a pineapple he had given Bush in another lifetime, when they had both been young lieutenants, William lying in hospital in Kingston after wounds sustained in battle. On that occasion Horatio had been so desperately eager that his regard be returned, tongue-tied with shyness and tortured with inexperience. The pineapple had been only the second he had ever seen. He had never before known a friend.

There in the _Lydia's_ cabin the long-ago feeling had rushed over him, of being an inexperienced boy, of desperately wanting Bush's comradeship and esteem. In violent reaction Hornblower summoned Bush and dressed him down for faults that in hindsight were only Horatio's: of over-familiarity, of presuming on their past friendship, of attempting to curry favour, of risking ship's discipline for an ill-considered whim. The last charge, especially, had been deeply unfair: it was only Horatio who had wanted to put aside the strict hierarchy of rank for a fleeting moment of fellow-feeling; Bush, sustained as he was by the gunroom's camaraderie, could not have known how desperately lonely Horatio felt when his lieutenant respectfully greeted him each morning. 

William had initially been hurt but accepting of the reprimand, but as the tirade had worn on, he had become more and more wooden, his face ever more devoid of expression, his spine ever straighter. In the end, it might have been a red-coated toy soldier that Hornblower dismissed from his cabin. Polwheal had come in shortly thereafter to remove the offending glass, and found Hornblower in an agony of self-recrimination by the gallery windows, loathing himself and keening for his lost family. 

The rest of the ship feasted on fresh pineapple that night, but Hornblower took no supper. By morning he had nearly convinced himself that there had been nothing more in the affair than the natural loneliness of command and the commonplace ambition of a lieutenant eager to take advantage; Horatio congratulated himself for being so canny as to put a stop to it. All through that long voyage to Nicaragua and back, he would remember at odd moments that perfumed glass of juice, the visceral temptation of it, and would righteously heap maledictions on Bush for putting the temptation in his way, and upon himself for being so weak as to crave it.

Now he burned with shame at the memory. Clearly, all the fault in the incident had been Horatio's; if any had been William's, it had only been in presuming to care for his ungrateful captain. 

Caring for his ungrateful captain, exactly as William had done when seeing to Horatio's coffee on the _Hotspur._ And with so many other offices, great and small, over the years.

William's hand lay unnaturally passive in Horatio's. It was unsettling: ever since the journey to Paris, William's hands had spoken to him, of his tenderness and devotion, of his willingness and desire. At the Château de Graçay, William's touch had offered solace against the loss of his ship and comfort against the winter's long, miserable confinement; in Sheerness, it provided a steady strength while Horatio's world careened on its axis. Even on the _Nonsuch,_ where he and William had hardly touched at all, there had still been moments when Bush had clasped his hand in earnest feeling, and Horatio had known the depth of his friend's esteem and devotion.

But now, with William's hand slack in his, Horatio could think only of Le Havre, William's hands heavily bandaged, and how impossibly inaccessible William had seemed because of it. Horatio had gone half-mad during William's apparent loss at Caudebec, and William's return had hardly seemed to remedy the feeling. For long hours, Horatio had sat at William's bedside, unable to speak of his feeling, and unable to relieve the lack by the caress of William's hand in his. 

William's hands had healed, eventually, and with the coming of the peace, Horatio had finally been able to express his own devotion. But to feel William's hand now newly passive in his filled Horatio with dread.

"I was wrong then, about the juice," Horatio said, stiff with shame, clutching at William's hand. "You were not presuming on our friendship." Then, in a paroxysm of self-abasement, "It was unfair, and it was unjust—"

But William returned Horatio's grip with a fierce pressure, and Horatio felt the abrupt relief of it all through him. "No, you were not unfair. I _did_ presume."

Annoyance flared up in Horatio; he had begun his apology and now he wanted only to debase himself in an agony of contrition. "It was not _right,_ William."

"It _was_ right, right and proper. You wanted only a lieutenant on that commission, as it should be. I count myself honoured that you required even that much of me." 

_Even that much,_ as if he hadn't thrown himself into the work, determined to win his captain's approval in this one regard if no other. Bush had never been a slack officer, but he became devilishly taut after that. And meanwhile Horatio held himself apart, backed up William during the worst of his excesses, and scorned himself for longing for what he could not have.

Horatio caressed William's hand, the thick calluses that it seemed William would retain unto the grave, the scarring from the disaster at Caudebec, the veins and tendons beneath the thinner skin at the back. He pressed his lips to a knuckle, unable to speak of his esteem and regret.

But William understood, perhaps, for his face softened. His thumb resumed its slow, steady stroke over Horatio's fingers. He lay down, rolling onto to his back, and pulled up Horatio's hand to lay flat across his broad chest. His fingers traced quietly over his friend's. 

Horatio would never have suspected those broad, strong hands of artistry, but they were deft enough with fancywork, and exquisitely sensitive over Horatio's own. For a moment he could almost envision them wielding a fine brush, labouring over flowers.

He had been a fool, coming far too late to something Bush had known straight through.

"It was not the first time, then, in France," he said.

He felt a short breath of derision under his hand, a puff of air against his fingers. "No," William said.

"Only the first time in a long time." Two long years on the _Lydia_ and the _Sutherland,_ William pushing all his affection and devotion into the demands of the service, into flemished-down ropes and Sunday inspections, without even the little displays of feeling that had marked their time together on the _Hotspur._

"Not so long," William said. His fingers kept up their steady pattern over Horatio's, apparently untroubled by the years of distance between them on the _Lydia_ and the _Sutherland._ Perhaps the rigors of the service, the exigencies of his captain's orders, had been enough for him. 

"Roses?" Horatio asked, still struck by the incongruity of William with a paintbrush in his hand, and William smiled to himself. 

"My sisters set me to tending the garden, whenever I was at home."

Rose bushes would have been little more than thorns when the _Hotspur_ sailed, and yet William had remembered roses in full bloom and set them down in ship's paint for Horatio, in blood red and mustard yellow, the colours of gunport lids and Nelson's chequer.

It was almost as unlikely as Bush holding his hand in the coach at the Bay of Roses. It still took Horatio's breath away: when all had been despair and agony, William had taken Horatio's hand, and smiled.

Horatio was still contemplating the unspeakable grace of that moment, when William heaved himself over to face Horatio. He hooked his stump over Horatio's leg, urging him close, and Horatio yielded to the suggestion, even though the time had long passed when he must be gingerly of William's stump. William lifted his head from the pillow and fitted his mouth to Horatio's, his kiss slow and strong and tender. Horatio ached with the feeling of it.

But when William pulled back, there was deviltry in his smile. "There now. That was a sign of my affection, in case there's any doubt later." Then, before Horatio could protest, "As is _this,"_ William added, using his greater weight to bowl Horatio over and buss him noisily. "And this, and _this."_

Horatio was spluttering with the indignity of it when William set him free. William rolled himself up to sitting and swung his leg out of bed, turning his back on Horatio. He reached up for the wooden leg in its becket on the wall — the becket that Horatio had installed when he had first taken Tegmore and reserved this room for William's use, this room that would now be William's until the Admiralty called one or the other of them away to their duty again. William took the leg down, and began fitting its cuff to his stump. "You have to admit, you're as bad at reading signals as any snot-nosed middy. I would have mast-headed you by now, if you'd been under my command."

The flippancy of the speech was shocking; they might have been in Kingston again, two young lieutenants out whoring together and as drunk as lords, instead of an entirely sober post-captain and a newly-promoted rear admiral, the latter both a peer of the realm and a Knight of the Bath.

"William," Horatio said, and William turned to look at him. To Horatio's surprise, William was blushing, not nearly as certain of himself as his bold words would have suggested. 

Horatio reached out to touch William's arm, his hand. He briefly clasped his fingers, the rough callus sliding comfortably under his touch. 

The deep lines around William's eyes creased with pleasure. He ducked his chin and reached across with his other hand to caress Horatio's fingers in his. 

Then, still holding Horatio's hand in his, he did up the buckles of his leg one-handed.


End file.
